


The Battle of Five Armies - A Rewrite

by themountainkingsreturn



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: BotFA Fix-It, Rewrite, real character development for Tauriel, rewriting movies that were good in theory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-13
Updated: 2016-06-13
Packaged: 2018-07-14 20:57:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7189916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themountainkingsreturn/pseuds/themountainkingsreturn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fixing the movie's mistakes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Battle of Five Armies - A Rewrite

Kíli does not tell Tauriel that she makes him feel alive. Instead, he just presses the rune stone into her hand, tender and open and sad because he knows she cannot come with them. Their hands linger. They have never touched before, except when she was healing him. He speaks Khuzdul to her. Not cocky and self-assured, but utterly overthrown. He does not have time to answer when she asks what it means. She knows anyway.

Galadriel is not weakened by her ring. She falls to the ground with the fury of her attack, and stands back up. She does not need to be carried out.

A scene between Thorin and Fíli. Thorin lets him stand before the throne. Look out over what will someday be his kingdom. He tells Fíli the same stories he has always told him, about the crisscrossed caverns ablaze with torchlight, and the music that filled the Mountain. Fíli closes his eyes, and this time he can see it all before him; the stories have never been more real. Voices ring in his ears. Laughter, singing. Thorin tells Fíli he reminds him of himself as a young prince under the Mountain. _I promise, I will build a great kingdom for you_ , he says, grasps his nephew’s shoulders, earnest, eager, almost a youth again himself. _This is our home._

Accordingly, it is Fíli who shouts down Thorin, not Kíli. But Thorin is not yet out of his dragon sickness — he tells him to get out of his sight, and Kíli follows his brother. They go to the entrance barricade and look out over the destruction. _We’ve got the mountain back_ , says Kíli halfheartedly, _this is what we came for._

_And our kinsmen are being slaughtered because of us!_ Fill tells him. _I would rather have stayed in the Blue Mountains without a penny to our name than be heir to a kingdom that was won by spite._

Thorin’s dragon sickness comes on quietly. It first presents itself as eagerness, giddy joy at being surrounded by the old treasure. The suspicion and cruelty only sets in as he speaks with Bilbo (with no strange dragon effects), and once he turns away Bard, we know that something is truly wrong.

Fíli dies defending Thorin. Thorin is unable to tend to him until the swarm of orcs is gone, and he holds Fíli as he dies. He is forced to flee as the orcs rally, and it is Fíli’s dead body that Azog holds aloft and drops at Kíli’s feet.

Tauriel kills Bolg. They hurtle off the cliff together and she lands, snarling, inelegant rage overtaking every muscle as she fights Bolg tooth and nail. Legolas is nowhere to be seen, and she does not need him. At the climax of the battle, she climbs onto Bolg’s shoulders, looks him in the eye, and severs (most of) his head from his body, her knives crisscrossing in a spray of black blood. Bolg stumbles backward — and right into the path of Beorn, who rips him apart. 

After the battle, she rocks Kíli’s body. _They want to bury him_ , she says to Thranduil, who is still and cold as he watches her grieve in a way he has not allowed himself to. _They want to bury him under all that stone, where no light can reach him._ He does not tell her her love was real, because it was never a question whether or not it was real — only whether it was permissible. Legolas asks, _Is she still banished?_ Thranduil’s face is impassable. _That is her choice now,_ he says.

Saruman visits Mordor, where a beautiful young man holds a palantír. _I have seen what is to come,_ the man says. _Fire and ash and breaking stone. See it for yourself, white wizard. I will show you._

Dís is at the funeral. She is so like her brother, black haired and dwarf-tall. She does not weep, but only stands very still, jaw clenched. _The king is dead. Long live the king._ Tauriel gains Daín’s permission to meet Dís at the gate. Tauriel is dressed for travel, in a dwarven cloak. A gift from the remaining ten dwarves. She presses the rune-stone into Dís’s hand. Dís looks at it, and we finally see the grief in her face. Slowly, painfully, she hands it back. _Keep it. My son’s love will go with you._ Tauriel cups it in her hands, runs her fingers over it, and pockets it. It is more precious to her than all the gold in Erebor. _Where will you go?_ Dís asks. Tauriel looks to the west. _I have always wanted to see starlight on the sea, she says._

Alfrid is cut entirely.

Bilbo is played by James McAvoy.


End file.
